Cummins case study

CASE STUDY

Developing a world leading brandin Europe

CMB Automotive help Cummins raise brand profile in a challenging market place

BackgroundCummins Inc. is a global power leader and the world’s largest independent manufacturer of diesel engines. With global manufacturing and support, Cummins powers more types of equipment in more markets than any other engine company. It provides products and service to customers in more than 150 countries.

Developing a World Leading Brand in a Challenging Market

CMB Automotive Marketing | T: +44 (0) 1327 856102 | www.cmbautomotive.com

In addition, the number of stakeholders involved in a project often leads to demanding requirements for what is (and isn’t) included in marketing messages.

With more than 35 Cummins owned locations and 300+ dealers throughout Europe, it was inevitable the Cummins brand would be misrepresented, abused or even, in some cases, totally ignored. This presented a challenge of bringing the brand under control to ensure every one of these touch points was communicating the same message in the same consistent way.

ObjectivesCMB were brought in to support the Cummins Europe marketing team. Our key objectives included:

ChallengesDespite its size and position of the world’s largest diesel engine manufacturer, Cummins had struggled to command a leading market position in Europe. A well-known, almost household brand in North America, Australia and other territories, Europe remained less aware of the range of markets served, the product range and the dealer / distributor network capabilities.

With nine sectors (Agriculture, Automotive, Construction, Defence/Government. Industrial, Materials Handling, Marine, Oil & Gas, Power Generation and Rail), operating in 15 countries and 13 different languages, Europe is a challenging market place. In addition, cultural differences between countries make a significant impact on business operations and it is important to identify these differences to work effectively in those territories.

As a large organisation, Cummins has separate teams controlling business activities and relationships with their specific market segments. These teams are often split between countries with different language, cultural and time zone barriers. Liaising with these teams can often be a slow process, creating ‘lag’ with project time scales.

“CMB demonstrated a real understanding of our brand, business and markets. They used their B2B experience to help us define our strategy, making them an ideal choice to support our own marketing efforts.”

Mark Dunk, Marketing Manager, Europe - Cummins

• Build awareness of Cummins brand in European markets

• Build awareness of market segment(s), relevant product ranges, services and aftermarket support

• Support distributors and the dealer network in all European territories

• Create and deploy marketing communications

• Create and deploy internal communications to educate and enforce Cummins brand messages to staff and stakeholders


Cummins maintains a traditional approach to marketing, PR, advertising and promotional efforts.

With very little existing digital marketing capability, almost all of the European websites were controlled by Cummins US. Developing digital and web-based marketing platforms was a complicated process and involved CMB providing education and training to bring the internal marketing team up to speed.

From an external view point, we could see that Cummins did a great job looking inwardly at product development, market organisation and structural effectiveness but lacked a clear understanding of communicating its benefits to customers and end users effectively.

It became clear, quite early in the process, that the way Cummins supported owned distributors and the dealer network throughout Europe had no unified approach. This was clearly the cause of inconsistency in brand messaging and customer communication, with each country communicating to its market in its own particular way.

Insights and ObservationsB2B brands cannot exist in a purely B2B environment, without consideration of the end user. Where the end user may not be the direct customer, they still need confidence in the product and the brand. If the end user sees the brand as desirable, this will create greater demand for the products and services (driving sales and building brand equity).

Distributors and dealers can be your greatest asset. By supporting distributors and dealers to market your products, this makes it easy for them to sell your products. They will earn more money, see greater turn over and a better bottom line. If your product is helping them grow their business, they will promote, push and sell your product more eagerly, creating better business and profits for you.


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A key consideration for all marketing communications was brand consistency. We needed to be able to adapt messaging to make it relevant to individual countries and market segments but the over all Cummins brand needed to be strongly enforced – on everything.

This included marketing literature, advertising, trade shows and events, PR and also on service vehicle livery and office /service depot signage. CMB became ‘brand stewards’ for Cummins in Europe, ensuring alignment of all branding and communication across all markets and countries.

Where relevant, the marketing literature was created in template format so the pieces could be efficiently adapted for use in different countries and languages.

Collaborating with the Cummins marketing team CMB deployed marketing strategies and campaigns to drive brand growth and strengthen brand equity. This included:

• Brand stewardship

• Design and deployment of marketing and product literature

• Copywriting

• Advertising

• Dealer and Distributor support programs

• Trade shows, exhibitions, conferences and events

• Technical and pricing guides

• Website and digital marketing

• Email marketing

• Video production

• Internal communications

• Office and depot branding

• Vehicle livery

• Sourcing, management and production of marketing collateral

• Supplier liaison

• Translation and multi-lingual communications

What we have done...


What we have achieved...

Notable Achievements Include:• Increased awareness, creating positive brand

associations, adding to the overall value of the Cummins brand

• Helped Cummins communicate the restructuring of the Cummins MerCruiser Diesel (CMD) brand without losing market share.

• Organised and managed an extremely complicated and commercially sensitive internal communications programme on restructuring of Cummins management teams and country leadership. We delivered internal communications bulletins simultaneously to over 1000 Cummins staff, throughout 15 countries, in 13 different languages and 3 time zones. 18 separate communications were carried out over 6 month period, all successfully delivered on time.

• Marketing support for more than 66 exhibitions and trade shows across Europe from Ireland to Turkey and everywhere in between!

• Successful product launches QSB6.7 and QSK95 engines throughout Europe.

• Creation of Cummins Europe’s ‘Legendary Service’ campaign which has subsequently been adopted for use globally.

15 countries13 languages10 markets35 locations300+ dealers

Cummins Europe

Results:Although we are not able to disclose figures and information relating to the performance of marketing activity for Cummins, we do feel this testimonial goes some way to proving the value of the work we do...

“CMB Automotive have contributed a great deal towards Cummins’ success in Europe. Their expert support and creative thinking has ensured the Cummins brand has been consistently and professionally represented in all our marketing communications. By maintaining Cummins brand integrity, CMB help us deliver our marketing messages more effectively to customers and also internally to staff and stakeholders. The overall effect on sales, brand loyalty, customer retention and awareness shouldn’t be understated.”

Mark Dunk – Marketing Manager, Europe - Cummins

Digital publications

Marketing Literature

Exhibition design and support

CMB Automotive Marketing Limited

Innovat ion Centre , S i lverstone Park , Northamptonshire NN12 8GX UK

t: +44 (0) 1327 856102 e: [email protected] www.cmbautomotive.com

Cummins case study

Automotive

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